Postwar Studies in the Geography of British Agriculture

Abstract

LTHOUGH Great Britain is a small island, the geography of its agriculture is exceedingly complex. This situation arises from the long history of human occupation and from the great variety of physical conditions within a small compass. It is accentuated by the impact of continued urban development in a country already highly urbanized, and by government intervention in agriculture, which is currently costing nearly one billion dollars a year in support of prices, in production grants, and in other forms of assistance. The number of those engaged in agricultural research of all kinds is large. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which is responsible for the administration of agriculture in England and Wales, is one of the largest government departments, with a numerous staff of agricultural scientists, economists, and statisticians, and the Agricultural Research Council maintains twenty-four research stations and supports much research in universities. Expenditure on research in agricultural economics alone is probably several hundred times greater than the amount currently available to the small number of geographers engaged in the study of British agriculture.I Although little of the work of the agricultural scientists and economists is specifically geographical, it does contain much that has geographical implications, and it has been a source both of seminal ideas and of material pertinent to the study of agricultural geography. Consequently, this article, which reviews contributions to the knowledge and understanding of the contemporary agricultural geography of Great Britain since World War II, deals with the work both of geographers and of researchers in other fields.2